


Lips to Kiss With, Hearts to Love, and Eyes to See

by Mithen



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-14 23:59:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Clark's consciousness is trapped in the Watchtower computers, Batman must keep his friend's awareness from slipping away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lips to Kiss With, Hearts to Love, and Eyes to See

  
_Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy,  
Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see?  
(Oscar Wilde, "Panthea")_   


Livewire cackled with laughter, hovering in the air. "Oh, I see you're _literally_ Big Blue now," she chortled. Lightning fizzled and crackled around her fingers. "I like the look!"

Batman watched the Watchtower monitor as Superman--his hair now an inky blue, his skin a pale aquamarine, ribbons of lightning trailing from his eyes and form--dodged a bolt of light from the laughing villain and came at her, but she slipped away at the last second. "Mmm," she noted, watching him, "Losing the cape was a good idea. Shows off your pretty blue a--hey!" Superman had wheeled around faster than the eye could follow and aimed a crackling punch at her, missing by mere inches. "And here I thought you wouldn't hit a lady."

Batman was afraid for a second Superman was going to point out Livewire was no lady, but instead he merely unleashed a barrage of punches that she evaded with ease.

"Careful," Batman growled, knowing the comm link would carry his words to Superman's ear. "She's just as fast as you are. And more used to her powers."

Superman muttered something indistinct under his breath. Then he darted in again, this time connecting squarely with her jaw. Livewire reeled backwards, her eyes wide. Then her smile widened. "Ooooh. That felt _good_ ," she purred. "Hit me again, big boy."

Batman frowned. "What just happened?"

"When I hit her..." Clark's voice sounded surprised. "She...I could feel it..."

Livewire jumped forward as he spoke, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him squarely on the mouth.

There was a fizzing _crackle_ and the monitors flashed pure white for an instant. When they cleared, Livewire was wreathed in energy, a massive corona of radiant power. "Oh, oh, _oh!_ " she cried. "It's so delicious! It just makes me want to--" A crackling bolt of energy hit Superman directly in the chest and he convulsed.

"Superman!" Batman was out of his chair, monitoring the readings from Superman's suit, the Luthor-made suit that contained his form of pure energy. Everything was spiking off the charts, rupturing, massive systems failure. Batman feverishly slapped the buttons that worked the teleporter. "Superman, I'm getting you out of--"

Another brilliant flash of light; when Batman could see again, Livewire was sprawled on her back on the rubble, out cold and with a blissful smile on her face.

Superman's suit was fluttering from the Metropolis sky, an empty blue rag.

The teleporter bay was empty when Batman came charging in, his breath catching in his chest. No, not empty. On one of the bays, a force field stood like a column, containing the dangerous energy Batman had teleported onto the Watchtower. Blue-white radiance swirled and crackled within the field, forming brief patterns of light, dissolving into formless brilliance again. Batman found himself resting one hand on the outside of the field, solid as a pane of glass. The light inside coalesced to the point he was touching like iron filings drawn to a magnet. "Clark," he whispered. "Hold on. I'll get you somewhere safe."

He moved to the teleporter controls, staring at the buttons and levers. The light in the column was drifting downward, losing coherence. There was no time, and only one place he could imagine that would hold the electrical impulses of his teammate safe.

Carefully, as if he was handling something very precious, Batman teleported Superman's electrical form into the Watchtower computer.

"Superman?" he said out loud. "Can you hear me?"

There was a crackle from the computer speakers. "Batman." It was only vaguely recognizable as Clark's voice, all the resonance and personality stripped from it down to a metallic monotone. "Where am I? I can't...see anything."

"You're...in the Watchtower system. I had to put your energy there to keep it from dissipating entirely."

"I remember. Livewire."

"Are you...all right?" It seemed a foolish question.

"I'm...it's very strange. I can't see anything. I can't really hear anything either. It's all...information. I process your voice, the sound waves. But I can't...hear it. It's like I'm...nowhere. A net of pure data. Intangible." The computerized voice was cool and mechanical. "Interesting."

Batman frowned. "We have to get LexCorp to make you a new suit."

"I'm not sure Luthor will be willing."

"Oh, he'll be willing."

And he was, after a brief visit from Batman and some carefully-chosen words. "But it'll take some _time_ , damn it," Luthor snarled. "And I don't want you lurking over my shoulder while I work."

"When will it be done?"

"When it's done," Luthor said shortly, and with that Batman had to be content.

"I've been exploring the Watchtower systems," Superman's voice came from the speakers as Batman returned to the main computer room. "I've had a lot of time while you were gone."

Under the monotone, there was the slightest hint of reproach. "I was only gone an hour," Batman said.

"An hour? It seemed so much longer. I can process information so quickly here, as pure thought. It seemed...a very long time. I'm glad you're back. Talk to me. Please."

"Luthor is working on your suit. I pointed out the P.R. advantages of being your savior and they seemed to outweigh the pleasures of revenge for now." Batman had also demonstrated that he could make LexCorp stock drop at a wave of his hand. He knew those investments would come in handy someday.

"I hope it's done soon." Clark's voice was filtered and tinny. "I feel very strange here."

"How so?"

"I feel...stretched thin. You can't imagine what it's like, this...void. No sight, no sound, no sensory information at all. Just data, facts, information. I can access a thousand menus around the world, but I can't remember what onion rings taste like. I can read the recipe for them, but I can't imagine the taste, or the smell, or even the sight."

Bruce frowned. "We have pictures in files."

"It's not the same. It's ones and zeros to me, a stream of data. Not the thing itself. I know that blue is experienced by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nanometers, but I can't _see_ it anymore." There was the slightest hint of fear in the flattened voice. "Tell me what blue is, Bruce."

Bruce sat down slowly in one of the chairs, looking at the banks of computers that held his friend's consciousness. "Blue," he said slowly. "Blue is a very abstract concept. It's...the sky and the sea, although the sea is usually more gray-green, or even brown. It's a flash of jay wings on snow. It's the dark shadowed blue of sapphires, or the bright flat blue of turquoise. It's the sky just after sunset, velvet and dark. It's--" _Clear eyes full of friendship._ "This is silly, you don't need me to wax poetical about the concept of blue."

"No, please, don't stop. It helps. I could almost--but it's gone again. Everything is gone." The voice was lifeless, dull, and Bruce felt a stab of worry.

"I'll keep talking," Batman said, leaning forward. "Just tell me what you want to hear about."

"Everything. Anything that isn't empty information. The senses, human senses. I need..." The voice trailed off into a wisp of sound, and Batman started to speak without thinking, letting the words come forth unbidden, a lifeline of descriptions between them.

"You mentioned onion rings. Some people like them breaded, but they should be battered. The golden puffiness of them, the way the onion melts into the batter until they're almost fused, and the heat brings out the sweetness of the onion. Hot enough to almost burn your fingers, the scent of oil and batter and onion mingled together..." He tried not to think about how absurd it was for Batman to be describing onion rings to a computer. "Or the taste of a dill pickle, the crunch of it, the sharp vinegar and garlic on your tongue, acidic and tangy. The first taste of cold water on a hot day, the moment just _before_ your thirst is quenched, the sweet relief of it."

"Hot days..." murmured Clark's voice.

"Yes, hot days. Humid days, when the minute you step outdoors sweat seems to spring up on your back and your brow and your clothes stick to it, and it feels like you're breathing blood, sticky in your lungs, like you're drowning. Then the rush of cold when you walk into an air-conditioned place, the sweat all turning to ice on the spot, making you shiver, but so good."

"Yes," whispered Clark. "Tell me all of it. Good things, bad things. I need you to tell me more. Don't...don't let me drift away."

"Listen," Bruce said. "Listen to me. Remember music: screeching fiddles and kettledrums you can feel in your gut, the quavering of a theramin, brassy trumpet fanfares. The human voice, there's nothing more beautiful than that, Clark, the human voice lifted in song, in harmonies. Gregorian chant, the Beach Boys, children's playground chants."

"I can almost...no, it's all mathematics: resonances and frequencies, it's not there. There's nothing there."

"Smell. Scent is one of the most visceral of the senses, Clark, inextricably linked to memory. Remember how things smell. Lilacs in early spring, that pale and wistful scent. Baking bread, the yeast of it, like life itself in the kitchen. The scent of warm laundry, heated cotton, the clean clarity of it. And not just the good scents, the bad ones are part of it all too. Burning rubber stinks and wet dogs, matted hair damp and redolent under your fingers. Skunk, the way that smell clings to your nostrils, pungent and defensive and angry."

"Shelby seemed to run into a skunk almost every spring." There was the faintest of chuckles under the flat tone. "Then all summer when she got wet there it would be again. Nothing could get it out."

"Yes." Bruce was standing up now, hands fisted in front of him as if he could grasp that thread of laughter and hold it tight, letting his thoughts leap without pattern or foresight, just to keep the words coming. "The smell of old books in a library, like dust and knowledge together. The way a fountain pen pulls on paper and the look of the ink it leaves behind, the way it shines and then is slowly absorbed into the paper, tiny threads of ink bleeding outward. The sound of rain on a tin roof, the thunder that can drown everything out, even your thoughts. The feel of mist on your skin, the way it beads in hair like a net of jewels. Wood, Clark--the grain of it, the way carved wood curves, the way it glows in the sunlight, slips like satin under your hands. The sharp scent of fresh-cut wood, exposed heartwood resinous and rich."

"I remember..."

"Hold on to that, Clark. The suit will be here soon. Just...don't forget what it's like to be here with us."

"Keep talking to me, Bruce. Please."

So Bruce kept talking. It was a desperate filibuster, a ceaseless torrent of words: sights and smells and sounds, sensations ranging from luxuriant to uncomfortable to painful. Bruce drew on all of his experiences--the plushness of feather beds and the welts of bedbug-infested pallets, the slippery succulence of caviar and the simple pleasure of a stolen apple when dizzy with hunger. He talked until his voice was hoarse, and then he described that too for Clark--the sensation of words scraping raw vocal cords, the gravelly sound of his own voice. He kept talking, clinging to Clark's consciousness, trying to bind it with a web of words to the world. To himself. Clark's quiet, distant voice interjected now and then, asking questions, sometimes with a spark of assent and memory. But the questions came slower and slower, the sparks more and more rare. Bruce glanced at the clock through bleary eyes and was startled to find he'd been talking for--that couldn't be right. Fifty hours?

He opened a channel to Oracle. "O. I need you to start putting more pressure on Luthor."

"Will do."

"--Without sounding desperate," he added.

"Of course," she said, her voice amused. "Oracle out."

"I should ask her to take over here," he mused out loud to the room, the banks of humming computers.

"I would prefer you didn't." The computerized voice was cool and inflectionless, but Bruce imagined there was a wistful note running under it. "I don't think anyone else could do this, Bruce. Your voice...it gets through all the dark. All the nothing. In the spaces between your words, I have time to think a thousand things, to lose myself in the ones and zeros. But the next word always...brings me back.

You bring me back."

So Bruce kept bringing him back, kept reeling him closer, scents and sounds the lure he used to keep his friend's shining soul from slipping away into the darkness. He talked until the hours ceased to matter, blurred into days.

And then he snapped awake and realized he had dozed off in his chair. He stared wildly at the clock. How long?

Ten minutes. He'd been silent for ten minutes. "Clark?" he croaked. Silence. _"Clark?"_

"Bruce?" The voice was toneless beyond the faintest lift of a question. "You stopped talking."

"Are you all right?"

"I've been using the Watchtower telescopes to look at the stars. They're really quite fascinating. Wolf-Rayet stars billowing stellar winds, white dwarfs with Balmer hydrogen spectral lines, black holes that reflect nothing back, a void, a dark rip at the heart of existence. Pure information." Cool, metallic curiosity, devoid of warmth. "I think in this form I could simply wander the universe forever. Just...send myself out, a ripple of energy on the vast waves of space, crossing the endless tides of information."

Panic galvanized Bruce's limbs at the detached tone of Clark's voice. "Clark? Don't do anything...anything rash."

"It would be so easy. A drop of consciousness merging with the unknown."

"Clark!" Bruce stumbled forward, bringing his hands against the console as if he could seize his friend's soul, hold it to him. "You have to stay with me. You can't leave. You have to see me again, have to...have to touch me again. Human touch, Clark, remember it, skin on skin, a hand warm against your own, all the lines and creases of the palm matched to yours, the life line. The heart line." His eyes were blurred with fatigue and something more; he brought his forehead to the cool steel of the computer, letting his breath mist the metal. "There's so much you haven't done, Clark. So much you have yet to experience. So much."

A short silence. "What haven't I done, Bruce?" whispered the voice, so close to him now.

"You haven't felt me run my fingers through your hair, my fingertips brushing your scalp, tracing the strong good bones of your skull, down to the occipital bone, brushing down to your nape. You haven't tasted wine with me. It tastes better with a friend. Richer. You haven't shared a glass with me, a glass of red wine as thick and dark as rubies, fuzzy as sleep on your tongue. You haven't felt my breath in your ear, haven't heard your own name whispered into the whorls of your ear, the faintest touch on your eardrum, saying only: _Clark_. You can't go if you haven't heard that, haven't felt the sound. You can't...can't go. Are you still there?"

"I'm still here."

Bruce was shaking, with exhaustion and fear and some dizzy wildness that drove him on. "You have to stay until you see what my eyes look like when I first open them in the morning. I can't describe them, Clark, I don't know what my eyes look like when I first see my lover in the morning. You have to stay so you can describe them to me. Promise me."

"I promise."

Bruce rocked forward, his hand curled into a fist against the shining metal. "There's so much left, Clark. The scent of good clean sweat and the sound of laughter. So much you have to experience."

"I'm not going, Bruce. I'm right here." The voice was still timbreless, metallic; yet somehow it was warm, reassuring. "You can rest, Bruce. I won't leave you. Sleep a little. I'll watch over you."

When Steel hurried into the computer room with the new suit a hour later, he found Batman half-asleep on his feet, his face pressed against the cool metal of the computer banks. Batman swiveled at the sound of footsteps and snatched the shining blue cloth from him. "Thank you," he said brusquely. "Clark?"

"I'm here."

Bruce held up the suit, feeling oddly helpless. "What do I--"

"Just hold it. I can bridge the gap without losing coherence."

As Bruce held the material in his hands, there was a crackle of energy in the air. He could feel it surround him, a rustling corona of brilliance, electricity painlessly blazing his nerves into incandescence. A bright caress of almost unbearable joy, and then he was kneeling on the ground, Clark's limp body in his arms. Clark's throat was a bright azure arch, his hair as blue-black as a deep twilight sky. He lifted his head and opened eyes like opals, full of light. He smiled at Bruce.

"Well then," said Steel uncomfortably, "I'll just be going. Nice to see you back, Superman."

"Welcome back," Bruce said softly.

Clark smelled clean, like the air after a storm. He reached up and touched one finger to Bruce's lower lip, and Bruce felt energy brush him like wildfire, kindling. "Say my name," Clark murmured, low and rich and warm as wine. "I want to hear you say it."

Bruce bent down until his lips were touching the shell of his ear.

"Clark," he whispered, feeling himself shivering, answering tremors running through the body in his arms. "Clark."  



End file.
